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Summary
Summary
From New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter, the first novel in her acclaimed Grant County Series.
A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear.
Sara's ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation--a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later. But he's got more than a sadistic serial killer on his hands, because the county's only female detective, Lena Adams--the first victim's sister--wants to serve her own justice.
But it is Sara who holds the key to finding the killer. A secret from her past could unmask the brilliantly malevolent psychopath... or mean her death.
Author Notes
Karin Slaughter was born in Georgia on January 6, 1971. In 2001, she published her first novel, Blindsighted, which made the Dagger Award shortlist for Best Thriller Debut. She is the author of the Grant County series and the Will Trent series. Her stand-alone novels include Cop Town, Pretty Girls, and Pieces of Her.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Billed as "Thomas Harris Meets Patricia Cornwell" and heralded by much advance hoopla in industry magazines, this long-anticipated launching of a scheduled three-book series featuring an attractive Georgia university town pediatrician-coroner marks the debut of a promising young author, but ultimately disappoints, partly due to overly-exorbitant pre-publishing claims. As Dr. Sara Linton leaves her pediatric clinic to meet her 33-year-old younger sister for lunch at a campus eatery, she receives a postcard picturing Atlanta's Emory University, where she interned. The enigmatic biblical message reads, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" At the diner, she goes to the restroom and discovers a young blind university professor who has been raped and brutally slashed with a knife. Too late to save her, Sara calls her ex-husband police chief, who, coincidentally, employs the victim's twin sister, Lena, as a detective. The trail quickly leads to a missing co-ed, and suspicion falls upon her druggie boyfriend. The co-ed is found raped, heavily drugged with belladonna and stretched out nude as if crucified on the hood of Sara's car in the hospital parking lot. Soon after, Lena is abducted by the killer. Fighting her attraction to her ex, Sara begins to suspect the rape-murders are tied to her own rape in the Emory parking lot 12 years ago. At the end, little suspense remains. Sara Linton is no Kay Scarpetta and her villain is a mere shadow of the complex, chilling Hannibal Lecter, but forgiving inept, trivia-cluttered dialogue and manifest lack of firsthand fluency in the medical arena the offbeat characters and setting are engaging enough to leave readers awaiting a sequel. (Sept. 17) Forecast: The hype including a blurb from George Pelecanos plus major advertising and a 5-city author tour should sell this early on, but the uneven execution may weaken demand for Slaughter's next book. Blindsighted is an alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild, and foreign rights have been sold in Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark and Norway. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Since she doubles as pediatrician and coroner for Georgia's Grant County, Dr. Sara Linton is used to trauma. But she doesn't expect it to follow her when she goes to lunch with her plumber sister Tessa and finds Prof. Sibyl Adams, a blind chemist at the Grant Institute of Technology, dying on a toilet seat in the ladies' room from a frightful series of wounds. Once Sara gets Sibyl Adams on the postmortem table, the ghoulish revelations just keep on coming. And her death is only the beginning. Julia Matthews, a coed who's disappeared from her Grant dorm, rapidly turns into another casualty of the same monstrous assailant, a man whose outrages are clearly escalating. Though they don't see eye to eye on very much at all, Sara and her ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, both agree with Sibyl's twin sister Lena Adams, a hotheaded police detective who keeps throwing herself into the case, that the perp isn't Will Harris, the black diner help the town seems to have picked out for the job. But is it really Julia's repellant boyfriend Ryan Gordon, or Jack Allen Wright, the man who raped Sara 12 years ago-a secret she never shared with the man who married her-or some friend or neighbor too close to think of as a suspect at all? Slaughter's first novel copies Patricia Cornwell's bestselling formula right down to the flaws: gruesome forensics, inventive plotting, strong/imperiled heroine who has problems with down-home male authority, a Perils of Pauline climax. Perfect escapist fare for readers well supplied with Maalox. Book-of-the-Month Club/Doubleday Book Club/Mystery Guild featured alternate selection
Booklist Review
When pediatrician Sara Linton discovers the mutilated body of a local college professor, it sends shock waves through her small rural Georgia town. Chief of Police Jeffrey Tolliver, who is Sara's ex-husband, and Detective Lena Adams must investigate. A toxicology report reveals that the killer dosed his victim with belladonna, a volatile drug that renders users "blindsighted," that is, conscious but unable to process what they see; the autopsy reveals that the killer is also highly sadistic. Sara, who doubles as the town's coroner, must deal with her own fear as well as the palpable emotional tension that exists between her and her ex-spouse as they work together to expose the killer. This is an accomplished first novel that melds a riveting plot with a brutally graphic portrait of a sexual sadist. Sara and Lena are tough, complicated, and smart, and Jeffrey is a man who knows he has made mistakes but has found a way to live with them. Two sequels featuring this trio are in the works. --Joanne Wilkinson
Library Journal Review
This debut novel's title refers to the extreme dilation of the pupils that results in the inability to see through open eyesone of the symptoms of belladonna ingestion. It also refers to authorities in a small Georgia town who must track down a serial killer who uses the drug to control his victims as he rapes and tortures them before the kill. As Sara Linton, the town's pediatrician and coroner, and Jeffrey Tolliver, chief of police and Sara's ex-husband, work furiously to find the killer, they realize that they must also face the secrets of their pasts, secrets to which they had turned a blind eye for many years. Only then can they see the killer in their midst. This is an extremely mature first novel, with well-developed characters and a finely tuned plot; it also has a creepy killer and enough gory details to satisfy any Thomas Harris fan. The slightly too-neat ending paves the way for a sequel, which is already planned for 2002. Recommended for all public library thriller collections.Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.